December 2015

March 30, 2007

The southern terrain of Socotra is gentler than the north with wide swathes of sandy beaches. The fishing villages along the shoreline have palm-frond huts for shelter and shade, but even here as in the cooler mountainous interior, their houses are substantial stone-built cubes. In the village of Zahek, a tiny fishing village that sees very few tourists, children playing on the shore ran away when I emerged from the car. This was slightly disconcerting given that in 1881 two German scientists conducting research on the island reported the people were friendly and “neither women nor children took flight at our approach”. What had happened in the intervening years, or was I so frightening? One of them timidly crept back asking me if I was “Sahibi?” Sahibi is a variation of the word used during the Indian Raj for white people. He was asking me if I was white.......

This little boy wondering if I was white is playing with broken coral and shells in the background.

March 27, 2007

The check-in desk for Socotra at the airport in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, was a scene of utter chaos. Newly arrived from Damascus I was greeted with the information that the flight to the Socotran capital of Hadibo was oversold. There are only two flights a week to the island so this news was not welcome. Yemenia Airlines is a much-improved carrier but their reservation system needs a bit of work.......I got on. On arrival in Hadibo I found a room on the third try - there are only 5 hotels on the island - after which I had breakfast at Hadibo’s main - not quite only - restaurant for breakfast where I had a plate of beans and delicious bread. My table companions were three tame goats and five Egyptian vultures. Throughout the island, the goats are perfectly tame and will eat from your hand, climb up on the table and eat from your plate or failing that will hoover up everything behind you including used paper napkins. As for the vultures they hover over every island village scarfing all the garbage and as such are known as ‘municipal’ birds since they do the work of trash collectors.

These ungainly looking vultures are probably the most common bird on the island.